Thursday, August 28, 2003

A Modest Proposal

As we know from this and similar reports, the Saudi
government is now challenging the Bush administration to prove Saudi citizens
are fighting American troops in Iraq.

'We are very concerned about this issue because we would like to take
action,' Saudi foreign policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir said in an interview with
The Associated Press. 'But we have no evidence of Saudis crossing into Iraq and
we have received no evidence from the U.S. government.'...Al-Jubeir said his
government has offered to send its own team of investigators to help U.S. officials
identify any possible Saudi expatriate who may have come through other
countries, like Iran, or who made it through the porous, desert borders between
Iraq and the Saudi kingdom...'We are willing to send a team to Iraq to look at
any evidence they might have,' he said. 'Saudi Arabia is determined to fight
terrorism and to prosecute terrorists regardless of where they are.'

Wouldn't it prove Saudi Arabia wasn't involved in terrorist sabotage of the
Iraq-Turkey pipline if it immediately agreed to an increase in oil production
equal to Iraq's normal capacity? Under such an agreement, Saudis would
subsequently cut back their production as Iraq gradually increased its own
output of crude. Regional crude production would no longer be affected by
Iraq's recovery or by ongoing economic terrorism against pipelines or fields.

This, like nothing else, could prove to the world Saudi Arabia is not
practicing economic terrorism as a means of limiting regional oil output. This
is a useful way Saudis could contribute to and prove their support of Iraq's
economic recovery.